Kathmandu. A five-member task force has been formed to investigate the issue of agriculture and livestock grants issued for a decade.

Minister for Agriculture, Forest and Environment Gita Chaudhary has formed a five-member task force to investigate the agriculture and livestock grants released since the fiscal year 2072/73 BS.

The task force formed under the coordination of Joint Secretary Badri Prasad Dahal has been given a deadline of 6 months to submit a detailed report to the Ministry.

The task force has reviewed the old reports, assessed the situation of misuse of grants and recommended appropriate steps for improvement.

The government has been implementing various subsidy programs every year for the agriculture and livestock sector, which contributes around 25 percent to the country’s GDP.

In the past years, the subsidy money has not reached the real and marginalized farmers and the effectiveness has been blamed for poor monitoring.

The task force’s mandate (TOR) includes the issue of reviewing old reports and identifying payments that have been misused. The task force has also been mandated to carry out a gap analysis with examples of good practices in the case of systems that are found to be effective, and to assess the situation of misuse of grants and recommend appropriate steps for improvement.

The taskforce has to submit its progress report to the Ministry Secretary at least twice in a month or more than once as required.